Workshops & Colloquia

The UW-Madison American Politics Workshop is a multidisciplinary group of faculty and graduate students that meets most Mondays at noon in 422 North Hall to discuss new and ongoing research projects in American Politics. A typical workshop meeting will open with 10-15 minutes of comments by the paper author followed by an hour of discussion. Papers are posted online for reading prior to the meeting.

The Comparative Politics Colloquium (CPC) is the intellectual forum for comparativists of all areas and methods to meet and discuss current work. In addition to featuring faculty papers and occasional outside speakers, the CPC is an integral part of graduate training in the department of political science, serving as a place for students to present papers as well as dissertation prospectuses, grant proposals, dissertation chapters and practice job talks.

European Politics Workshop

The workshop is a group of faculty and graduate students that meets every other month to discuss research projects in contemporary and historical European Politics. The workshop is a forum for informal discussion about ongoing research at various stages of completion: working papers, book chapters, and funding or grant proposals. We invite researchers from multiple disciplines to present their work in the workshop. For more information, contact Maayan Mor at mmor@wisc.edu. To join the mailing list, send an email to: join-ps-european@lists.wisc.edu.

The Experimental Politics Workshop brings together graduate students and faculty interested in conducting research using experimental methods. We meet roughly once a month to discuss experimental proposals or in-progress work produced by faculty and graduate students. We strongly prefer presentations of empirical work in the design stage -- rather than complete drafts or finished papers -- since the most efficient way to improve experimental research is at this stage of development. The group crosses subfield boundaries and welcomes presentations of research employing any experimental method (lab/field/survey/natural experiment) or dealing with experimental methodology.

The IR Colloquium brings students and faculty together to discuss international security, foreign policy, international organizations, and international political economy. Visiting scholars as well as faculty and graduate students from UW present their ongoing research, followed by questions and open discussion among the participants. For updated information about meetings, discussion papers etc.

The Latin American Colloquium (LAC) brings together graduate students and faculty with an area interest and research focus on Latin America. The group meets once a month to discuss published and in-progress articles, book chapters, and funding or grant proposals produced by faculty and graduate students. The LAC actively encourages an eclectic mix of methods and theoretical perspectives and facilitates exchanges between a range of social science disciplines. For more information, contact Ned Littlefield at elittlefield@wisc.edu.

Models and Data Group (MAD) is a working group to assist faculty and graduate students in improving the quantitative aspects of working papers. Topics discussed cover a wide range of substantive interests from every subfield, while discussions focus on methodology issues ranging from research design to estimation issues. Graduate students are encouraged to participate as members of the working group, especially in the role of presenters.

Modern political economy may be defined as the study of incentives in group life. Central to the field are such questions as the nature of cooperation and competition among individuals and organizations, the role of institutions in structuring individual behavior, and the aggregation of individual preferences into group choice. Using tools and concepts that largely originate in economic theory, political economy has grown to encompass theoretical and applied work in economics, political science, sociology, and related disciplines. The Political Economy Colloquium features presentations by visiting and University of Wisconsin-Madison speakers on a wide range of topics within this field.

The Political Theory Workshop brings together graduate students and faculty with an interest in the history of social and political thought, normative social and political theory, and the normative and theoretical dimensions of public policy and public law. Our meetings center around the discussion of work in progress by UW graduate students and faculty, as well as by invited guests from around the country. They include a brief presentation by the author and a prepared response by an advanced graduate student, followed by a general discussion. In most cases papers are distributed in advance of the meetings. We welcome participants from a broad range of disciplinary and methodological approaches.

Contact Us

Department of Political Science110 North Hall1050 Bascom MallUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonMadison, WI 53706